TORONTO (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Canada’s Hall of Fame will soon have a home in Toronto.
The city beat out nearby Hamilton to house the facility, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced on Tuesday.
“When you think of a Canadian Music Hall of Fame, it could generate a somewhat dusty image and that is very far from what we’re shooting for. It’s going to be very high-energy,” Ross Reynolds, chairman of the Academy, told the Canadian Press. “It will be much more interactive than the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame (in Cleveland).”
The facility is expected to open in the summer of 2007 in the city’s downtown area.
It is expected to span three floors of a 10-story building, that will also include a record store, stereo-equipment store, movies theaters and restaurants.
Peter Tillman, president of Spinning Wheel Designs and project director for the Toronto museum, compared the complex to an “entertainment-style project similar to Times Square.”
“The outside of the building has been designed like a giant billboard,” he told the press. “If you can imagine a 10-story-high billboard, with, say, 10 different types of television screens and monitors and flashing lights and all kinds of bells and whistles.”
For more than 25 years, the Academy has been inducting musicians and industry leaders into a hall of fame, but has not had a physical base.
Five cities, including Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Sault Ste. Marie, originally bid on the project. All candidates besides Hamilton and Toronto dropped out or were eliminated except Toronto and Hamilton.
“The overriding driving factor here was the location and the traffic and the dynamism of that particular location,” Reynolds told the press.
The project will cost about $40 million, with funds to come from corporate sponsors and the music industry as well as a mix of private and public sponsors. –by CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
